


Harry Potter and the Work-Life Balance

by bramblePatch



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Archived from Bramblepatch Blog, Gen, Meta Essays, Nonfiction, career choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 18:10:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16837750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bramblePatch/pseuds/bramblePatch
Summary: Originally posted on my Tumblr August 2017, to refute a discussion of how Harry should have just immediately become a Hogwarts professor instead of joining the Aurors.





	Harry Potter and the Work-Life Balance

Honestly I’m all for him ending up in a teaching position, but I actually really like Harry working outside Hogwarts at least for a while as a young adult?

It’s… not healthy to get too attached to Hogwarts. To do so is to be stranded in a perpetual false childhood, avoiding the pressures and responsibilities of adult wizarding society and in the process, generally destroying yourself and endangering others. We see this in that whole string of lost boys central to the plot: Dumbledore’s intentional self-exile from adult life after his brief brush with extremism ends in tragedy, avoiding the “dangers” of political responsibility and instead building a stronghold where he has extraordinary influence over Wizarding Britain’s most impressionable minds. Voldemort’s fixation on the first place he felt safe and wanted, and his willingness to sabotage the school and to destroy a civilization to gain control over Hogwarts. Hagrid’s being denied the opportunity to gain the basic qualifications of wizarding adulthood, which forces the choice: leave wizarding society entirely or attach himself to the school indefinitely and exist in a state of dependence and restriction more suited to a kid in their mid teens than a fully grown man. Snape, grown and presumably pursuing a career, forced back into the school in a moment of weakness and distress at the whim of his two masters, and left to stagnate in a role he manifestly does not find fulfilling.

Which isn’t to say that all Hogwarts teachers are emotionally stunted ticking time bombs, but… Harry’s a risk factor in pretty much the same way the other four are. He needs greater interaction with adults who are not in his own age group or former teachers of his, he needs to find some degree of stability as an adult wizard in his own right. Hogwarts is full of people for whom The Boy Who Lived isn’t just a fairytale, he’s a larger-than-life champion who fought most of his greatest battles on school grounds.

And Hogwarts is not the only place that wizards learn! How is Harry _ready_ to teach DADA at this point, anyway? He’s a competent duelist with a small degree of specialist knowledge in old, deep binding and protective magics, but Defense Against the Dark Arts covers more than just war-dueling and blood-protection. Harry’s DADA education is as comprehensive as anyone in his generation, but his generation - and those immediately before him - had _shitty, shitty_ DADA education with holes you could drive a Buick through. The Auror training program would fill some of those gaps, a few years in the field would fill more.

And maybe - maybe he’d be happier in a position where he can teach people who already have a grounding and want to learn specialized skills for specific situations, rather than guiding small children through the very basics and grading papers all weekend every weekend. Maybe his calling as indicated by his leadership of the DA isn’t to be the Hogwarts DADA Professor, but an instructor to new Auror candidates.

Albus Dumbledore’s life was a disaster. Alastor Moody might be a better model.


End file.
